


Sam Winchester Sees the Light (And Dean's Awkward Boner Face)

by YamiTami



Series: A Collection of Scenes Which Never Quite Made it into the Book of Chuck (Even Though Becky would have Loved it if They Had) [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas has no idea what is going on, Dean realizes the angel is hot, Fallen Castiel, Gen, M/M, Sam laughs at the look on his face
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:53:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is falling and he has to start doing human things to save energy. That means eating for sustenance, sleeping, and learning how to use a washing machine. This leads to a revelation.</p><p>Shamelessly inspired by a gifset of Misha putting a shirt on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sam Winchester Sees the Light (And Dean's Awkward Boner Face)

The Winchester boys were very good liars. Sam came to grips with this fact ages ago, about a year after he left the family business to go to college. He and Dean had been raised from a very young age—in Sam’s case practically since birth—to be con men. They were in fact very, very good at being con men, and there weren’t many people who could see through their various masks and guises. Unless they happened to be con men hunters themselves. Or normal people who happened to see them blow away a ghost. Or the occasionally lucky member of the FBI who managed to hold onto them long enough to get their files in hand. 

The point being that no one could trust the sincerity of a Winchester unless they were staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Even another Winchester. Sam used to think that Dean was better at it than he was, the whole lying to family thing, until he spent a few months lying to his brother about what was going on with Ruby. After that it became pretty apparent that Dean was far more truthful. Comparatively, at least. Either that or Sam was just better at reading a dishonest brother than Dean was.

But it wasn’t all about ghosts and demons and stopping more Apocalypses than should exist. Sometimes the whole truth-lie thing was about the stupid little things. Sometimes it was more about who ate the last of the bologna. Sometimes it was an evaded question about who got the mustard, blood, or powder burns on a given article of clothing. And sometimes it was about in-the-process-of-falling -angels with hips which should apparently be illegal.

But that’s jumping ahead a bit.

As Castiel lost more and more of his Grace he decided to start compensating for it by doing small things the mortal way so he could save his energy for the big stuff. Where ‘decided’ really means that Sam cornered him and told him he needed to face the fact that he couldn’t afford to keep going as he was. It was like a root canal for both parties, doubly so since Cas still didn’t fully trust Sam due to the whole abomination thing, but Sam was used to Dean hiding injuries behind his liar’s mask and it was usually up to the little brother to drag the truth out. Cas wasn’t _proud_ , especially compared to some of the other angels who talked about humans as though they were a step lower than tapeworms, but that didn’t mean that the angel didn’t have his pride. He was also stubborn as hell, but under the combined stare down of the Winchester brothers he eventually buckled. Cas then pouted about it while Dean teased him for acting like a five-year-old, unsurprisingly in the manner which a five-year-old would tease someone. Sam, for his part, rolled his eyes at both of them.

The majority of what Castiel could afford to cut back on had to do with the care and maintenance of his body. With Jimmy Novak gone there wasn’t as much energy available to keep the body alive, so Cas had to sink more of his failing Grace into it just to stay attached. That part couldn’t be changed, but the way Cas cheated at basic bodily functions could. That meant eating and sleeping like a normal human being, or at least, closer than Castiel had come previously with an impressive nothing at all. He started on food since he had at least eaten things, but before it had always been a moment of curiosity or Dean saying ‘man, you’ve gotta try this’. Eating and drinking for the utility of it was an idea that made Cas pull a face. Sam proved he was smart and took a step back from the whole convincing Castiel this was a good idea job; there was the bad air not completely cleared, and even if that wasn’t an issue Dean would still be far better at bullying the angel into doing what was good for him. It was the same sort of care he used to show Sam when he was sick as a kid, where Dean would headlock his little brother into staying in bed and swallowing foul tasting syrups.

Sleep was the thing Cas balked at the most. It made him really uncomfortable to think that he would be unable to see any threats coming for several hours, and when questioned about it he gave off the distinct impression that he didn’t understand how humans dealt with it. Dean managed to talk him into crashing in the hotel room of the day whenever their paths crossed. Sam thought it was touching to see how much of the tension bled out of Castiel’s shoulders when Dean offered to stand watch while the angel slept. He said as much, once Cas was out, and Dean punched him in the shoulder.

It was a couple months later, after they’d all gotten used to the routine of Cas taking a powernap anytime he was in the same city as the brothers, which happened more and more frequently as it became easier for him to hide his power through the depressing fact of there being less of it. It was then that Sam figured out that hygiene had been put on the list of things to cut back on when it came to angel mojo, and while Cas did figure out showers on his own he hadn’t yet discovered Laundromats. For all that they lived out of motels and a car, the Winchester boys knew the benefit of crisply clean clothes. Clean clothes made it a little easier for people to cut them some slack when they started asking bizarre questions. Definitely easier than if their shirts still smelled of otherworldly blood, soot, and gunpowder. So when Cas showed up in a shirt that was on its way to standing up on its own, he found himself met with a double barrel of ‘you are learning how to use a washing machine’.

Of course, since Cas only owned the one outfit there was a question of logistics. Namely, what he was going to wear while his clothes were cycling. When Sam returned from the car with his and Dean’s laundry—they’d toss Castiel’s clothes in with theirs so they’d have a full load—he found his brother earnestly trying to convince Cas to go naked while his clothes were being washed. Sam gave Dean what had been described as ‘bitchface’. Usually it was reserved for moments along the lines of ‘if the pizza man loves the babysitter’ where it was abundantly clear how much Dean had corrupted an angel, but Sam felt it was sensible to be preemptive in this case. He was _pretty_ sure that Cas got that it was a joke, but he really didn’t want to run the risk of their current investigation being hampered because they had to spring their angel out of jail on public indecency charges.

So Cas was handed a stack of clothes and was booted off to take a shower. There were some brand new underwear, a fresh pack of socks, a pair of sweats which belonged to Dean, and a plaid shirt that existed in the same state of flux as most of their shirts where it sort of belonged to both brothers and it was anyone’s guess who the original owner was. Living out of each other’s pockets for as long as they had, things like shirts belonging to both of them and neither of them wasn’t strange to them. It was in fact one of the things that Sam found particularly strange about ‘normal’, even though he craved it. He seriously couldn’t understand why his first girlfriend had been so bothered when her sister borrowed a shirt and then gave it back intact.

The thing is that the fact that the brothers were comfortable with that kind of closeness meant that it was what Cas learned as the yardstick for humanity. Which Sam had never thought of as a particularly bad thing, it’s not as though they were the only ones who walked around a motel room in their underwear and thought nothing of it, and while Cas was still awkward on a lot of interacting with humanity issues he did know that there were different sets of rules for different people and places. For example, while it had been a long and arduous process Dean had managed to train Cas not to stand so close to someone that their noses were two inches apart. The lesson stuck and Cas didn’t get too close to strangers. However, the angel still strayed into the ring of Dean’s personal space usually reserved for his brother. Which... kind of bugged Sam in a really petty way, something which he squashed as soon as he identified the feeling. Dean was entitled to let people in. Or, at least, to give up on the idea that his guardian angel was ever going to learn.

The point being that Cas thought absolutely nothing of padding out of the bathroom with the sweats on and the shirt still in his hand. Sam glanced up at the movement and idly noted how the angel had no scars on his chest or back—all that holy healing—and started wondering if Cas had already realized that he’d have to stop putting himself in the paths of bullets and blades or if that was going to be another uncomfortable conversation he’d have to face. Sam turned to his brother, intent on passing that particular buck, and found himself just a little distracted by the look on Dean’s _extremely_ distracted face.

See, one of the things that Dean lied about was the fact that he was on occasion attracted to men. It wasn’t a _lie_ when he would defensively respond to any inquiries as to his sexuality with ‘I like women’—his lust for the leggy was completely genuine and outweighed his interest in the bearded—but there were those times when Sam would catch Dean turning an interested eye on a member of the same sex. Not nearly as often as the opposite sex, to be sure, but it was still definitely there. The first time Sam had realized what his then in-the-throes-of-puberty big brother was looking at the young boy had paused, tried to look at the guy in question in the same way, and came up short. Sam had figured it was one of those things like how Dean thought that pie was the best thing ever while Sam could sum up his feelings with a shrug, and put it out of his mind. It wasn’t until later that he realized what kind of attitude could unfortunately be found in the sort of backwater saloons they frequented out of necessity or the schools they passed through in a blur. It made him mad, the first time he witnessed Dean’s denial. Sam could understand why he couldn’t be honest about what his dad did for a ‘living’, but as far as he was concerned this was just stupid.

The actual Hunter community was far less stupid about that sort of thing—if you were killing things that went bump in the night then you were in—but old habits died hard and Dean still tried to maintain that he had never looked at another guy with interest as though Sam would think any less of him for it. Sam had even let Dean know that he knew, if only to watch his older brother splutter, but Dean still maintained that it was all a trick of the light and Sam’s own overactive imagination.

Looking at his brother on the other side of the rickety hotel kitchenette table, Sam snorted. Yeah, totally his imagination.

Dean was sitting with his chin propped up on his fist and a research book open in front of him. His free hand was, at the moment, frozen in the act of turning a page. Sam was pretty sure that the only reason Dean’s jaw wasn’t slack was because he was leaning on it. He was, however, doing a great impression of a deer in the headlights. Sam followed his brother’s unwavering gaze to where Cas was in the process of unfolding the shirt. He then tried to look at Castiel as a sexual object.

Dean’s sweats were just a little bit too big and Cas hadn’t bothered to tie the drawstring all that tight so they rode low, revealing the angel’s well toned stomach and the jut of his hipbones. He fumbled with the shirt a little, finally raising it up above his head so he could see where he was putting his arm, and the resulting stretch resulted in the soft sound of paper rustling as Dean’s hand shook on the half-turned page. Castiel twisted as he got the thing on, unintentionally giving the two humans in the room a show of how his torso moved both from the front and in profile with his back arched.

Sam could objectively see how someone would find Castiel physically attractive, in the same way he’d appreciate a marble statue in a museum.

Dean made a strangled choking sound in the back of his throat.

Cas paused, his arm halfway through the second sleeve, and looked over at the table with that stare of his.

“Is there something the matter?” Castiel asked, looking down at himself as though he expected to be told he’d put the pants on backwards.

“No!” Dean answered much too quickly and far too loudly. “I mean, uh, I’ve just never seen you out of the trench coat and tie number. It’s different, you know?”

Sam grit his teeth with the effort it took not to laugh.

“Ah,” Cas said at last. He seemed to take this as a reasonable explanation and finished putting on the shirt. He _did_ look a little odd in more casual clothes, and it looked like he felt odd wearing them. Sam figured that he’d have to get used to it, and that thought sobered him enough to keep it together until Cas announced he had forgotten his new socks in the bathroom and disappeared from sight.

Sam looked over and saw that Dean was still holding the page in the air. He grinned. “So... do you still want him to go naked at the Laundromat?”

When Cas returned, socks in hand, it was to the sight of a spluttering Dean trying his best to push his little brother’s chair over, all while Sam laughed like a maniac. Humans, he decided, were strange.


End file.
